He walked forward, deserting for a moment the road. He stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down. The tide was high and the line of the sea slipped up to the feet of the cliff, splashed there its white fringe of spray, then very gently fell back. Sea-pinks starred the cliffs with colour. Sea-gulls whirled, fragments of white foam, against the blue. Just below him one bird sat, its head cocked, waiting. With a shrill cry of vigour and assurance it flashed away, curving, circling, bending, dipping, as though it were showing to Harkness what it could do. He walked along the cliff path happier than he had been for many, many months. This was enough were there no more than this. For this at least he must thank Maradick--this peace, this air, this silence. . . . Turning a bend of the cliff he saw the town. IX It was absolutely the town of his vision. He saw, with a strange tightening of his heart as though he were being warned of something, that was so. There was the curving bay with the faint fringe of white pencilling the yellow sand, there the houses rising tier on tier above the beach, there the fringe of dusky wood. What did it mean? Why had he a clutch of terror as though some one was whispering to him that he must turn tail and run? Nothing could be more lovely than that town basking in the mellow afternoon light, and yet he was afraid at the sight of it--afraid so that his content and happiness of a moment ago were all gone and of a sudden he longed for company. He was so well accustomed to his own reactions and so deeply despised them that he shrugged his shoulders and walked forward. Never, it seemed, was it possible for him to enjoy anything for more than a moment. Trouble and regret always came. But this was not regret, it was rather a kind of forewarning. He did not know that he had ever before looked on a place for the first time with so odd a mingling of conviction that he had already seen it, of admiration for its beauty, and of some sort of alarmed dismay. Beautiful it was, more Italian than English, with its white walls, its purple sea and warm scented air. So peaceful and of so happy a tranquillity. He tried to drive his fear from him, but it hung on so that he was often turning back and looking behind him over his shoulder. He struck the road again. It curved now, white and broad, down the hill toward the town. At the very peak of the hill before the descent began a man was standing watching something.